# Kinsta vs WP Engine

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/compare/kinsta-vs-wp-engine/

Every value below is read from Kinsta's and WP Engine's own documentation. See https://inetgeek.com/methodology/ for how.

## At a glance

| Criterion | Kinsta | WP Engine |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Free tier | No — Only free offer is a first month free for new customers on select plans, plus a 30-day money-back guarantee. | No — Plans page advertises only paid tiers; no free plan or free trial is listed on it. |
| Kind of free offer | No free offer | No free offer |
| Entry paid plan | $35/month for the entry single-site plan (first month $0, then $35/month); $30/month if paid annually. | Starting at $28.00/month for the Managed Hosting Platform, quoted in USD; $336.00 if billed annually. On 14 September 2026 the same URL also served a euro-priced variant at €25.60/month, to roughly one request in eight; thirty consecutive samples on 15 September returned only the dollar-priced body, so that behaviour is recorded as observed and not as current. |
| Pricing model | Fixed monthly or annual plan tiers, each including a set number of WordPress installs; annual billing gives two months free, and visit/storage/CDN usage above the plan limits is billed as overage fees. | Tiered subscription plans (Essential, Core, Enterprise) configured by capacity - sites, visits and storage - billed monthly or annually, with 20% off annual Essential; additional sites are $20 (USD) per month each. |
| When you exceed a cap | Sites stay online and are billed an overage fee of $0.50 per 1,000 visits; disk space overage is prorated at $2 per GB per month | Not throttled or cut off; billed $2 per 1,000 extra monthly visitors |
| Storage (entry plan) | 10GB storage on the Single 20GB plan (cheapest paid WordPress hosting plan) | 10 GB storage on the Essential plan at its cheapest capacity tier (1 site, 25,000 visits a month) |
| Sites or apps included | 1 WordPress install on the Single 20GB plan (cheapest paid WordPress hosting plan) | 1 site on the entry Essential tier (1–30 across Essential capacity tiers); additional sites $20/month each |
| Monthly visits cap | No visit cap on the entry plan: Single 20GB is billed on bandwidth, at 20GB a month. Kinsta offers visits-billed plans as the alternative, where the Business Launch tier estimates 75,000 visits a month. | 25,000 visits/mo on the Essential plan at its cheapest capacity tier |
| Included bandwidth | 20GB server bandwidth a month on the Single 20GB plan, plus 125GB of CDN bandwidth. | 75 GB per month on Essential plans, 550 GB on Core and 550 GB+ on Enterprise, measured as gigabytes transferred per month. |
| Max request duration | 300 seconds (default PHP max_execution_time) | 60 seconds |
| Git deployment | Limited | Supported — Via GitPush, WP Engine's own tool, over SSH keys rather than a connected repository. |
| Scheduled jobs | Supported — Real server cron jobs per site container; the minimum interval is 5 minutes. | Supported — Alternate Cron is server-based and checks for due events every minute; default wp-cron fires on page visits. |
| Edge network | Supported | Limited — Global Edge Security is a paid add-on: Cloudflare CDN, WAF, DDoS mitigation and SSL, not included by default. |
| Regions | 30 data centers | Google Cloud: Iowa (us-central1), South Carolina (us-east1), Montreal (northamerica-northeast1), Belgium (europe-west1), London (europe-west2), Frankfurt (europe-west3), Netherlands (europe-west4) and others; some regions carry upgraded pricing. |
| Support on entry paid plan | 24/7 human support in 8 languages, on every plan including the cheapest. | 24/7 technical support on Essential, the entry plan; Core adds priority support alongside dedicated infrastructure. |
| SOC 2 | SOC 2 Type II report, audited by BARR Advisory with Vanta as the GRC platform; copy requested under NDA from the Trust Report page. | SOC 2 Type II and SOC 3 reports are available on request from an Account Manager or WP Engine Sales; they are not published on the site. |
| ISO 27001 | Trust Center compliance list shows ISO 27001:2022 alongside ISO 27017 and ISO 27018; the ISO 27001 certificate is a requestable document there. Page renders client-side (Vanta portal); text read with a rendering fetch. | ISO 27001:2022 certified; the certification is available on request via an Account Manager or WP Engine Sales. |
| HIPAA | No HIPAA-compliant hosting product and no Business Associate Agreements; Kinsta says PHI should not be stored or transmitted on the platform. | No - the Acceptable Use Policy forbids using the Services to store or process Protected Health Information as defined under HIPAA. |
| GDPR / data residency | DPA: the customer selects the data center region its applications are hosted in; some parts of the Services still require international transfers, covered by the SCCs and UK Addendum. | Hosting region is customer-selectable and includes EU locations (Belgium, London, Netherlands, Finland, Frankfurt); moves between regions by Support request. |
| PCI DSS | PCI compliance is not guaranteed and Kinsta does not audit customer sites; customers have passed third-party PCI scans while hosted on Kinsta. | WP Engine does not store, process or transmit cardholder data, and its Acceptable Use Policy prohibits customers from doing so on the platform. |
| Encryption at rest | DPA Annex II: all Customer Personal Data stored in data centers — all Customer Applications and access logs — is encrypted at rest. | All data on WP Engine servers is encrypted at rest and in transit by default; backup media is encrypted as well. |
| Role-based access control | MyKinsta roles: a single Company Owner plus three company-level roles (Administrator, Developer, Billing), and Site Administrator or Site Developer granted per site. | User Portal roles - Owner, Full (with/without billing) and Partial (with/without billing) - scope environment, billing and user-management actions. |
| Dedicated infrastructure | Dedicated virtual server with dedicated CPU and RAM, sold as an add-on to a hosting plan starting at $300 a month. | Premium plans are fully self-contained environments not shared with other WP Engine customers; other customers get logically separate environments. The plans page separately marks Core and Enterprise environment type as "Isolated" and Essential as "Shared". |

## Where they differ

### Entry paid plan

- Kinsta: $35/month for the entry single-site plan (first month $0, then $35/month); $30/month if paid annually. ([source](https://kinsta.com/wordpress-hosting/))
- WP Engine: Starting at $28.00/month for the Managed Hosting Platform, quoted in USD; $336.00 if billed annually. On 14 September 2026 the same URL also served a euro-priced variant at €25.60/month, to roughly one request in eight; thirty consecutive samples on 15 September returned only the dollar-priced body, so that behaviour is recorded as observed and not as current. ([source](https://wpengine.com/plans/))
- Lean: 44% Kinsta / 56% WP Engine — inversely proportional to the documented price. inetGeek's own reading, computed from the two values above by the rules at https://inetgeek.com/methodology/, not a provider claim.

### Pricing model

- Kinsta: Fixed monthly or annual plan tiers, each including a set number of WordPress installs; annual billing gives two months free, and visit/storage/CDN usage above the plan limits is billed as overage fees. ([source](https://kinsta.com/pricing/))
- WP Engine: Tiered subscription plans (Essential, Core, Enterprise) configured by capacity - sites, visits and storage - billed monthly or annually, with 20% off annual Essential; additional sites are $20 (USD) per month each. ([source](https://wpengine.com/plans/))
- Lean: none. No documented basis to lean either way on this criterion.

### When you exceed a cap

- Kinsta: Sites stay online and are billed an overage fee of $0.50 per 1,000 visits; disk space overage is prorated at $2 per GB per month ([source](https://kinsta.com/docs/billing/wordpress-hosting-plans/overages/))
- WP Engine: Not throttled or cut off; billed $2 per 1,000 extra monthly visitors ([source](https://wpengine.com/overage-pricing/))
- Lean: neither leads — both document the same answer.

### Storage (entry plan)

- Kinsta: 10GB storage on the Single 20GB plan (cheapest paid WordPress hosting plan) ([source](https://kinsta.com/wordpress-hosting/))
- WP Engine: 10 GB storage on the Essential plan at its cheapest capacity tier (1 site, 25,000 visits a month) ([source](https://wpengine.com/plans/))
- Lean: 50% Kinsta / 50% WP Engine — proportional to the documented capacity. inetGeek's own reading, computed from the two values above by the rules at https://inetgeek.com/methodology/, not a provider claim.

### Sites or apps included

- Kinsta: 1 WordPress install on the Single 20GB plan (cheapest paid WordPress hosting plan) ([source](https://kinsta.com/wordpress-hosting/))
- WP Engine: 1 site on the entry Essential tier (1–30 across Essential capacity tiers); additional sites $20/month each ([source](https://wpengine.com/plans/))
- Lean: 50% Kinsta / 50% WP Engine — proportional to the documented capacity. inetGeek's own reading, computed from the two values above by the rules at https://inetgeek.com/methodology/, not a provider claim.

### Monthly visits cap

- Kinsta: No visit cap on the entry plan: Single 20GB is billed on bandwidth, at 20GB a month. Kinsta offers visits-billed plans as the alternative, where the Business Launch tier estimates 75,000 visits a month. ([source](https://kinsta.com/wordpress-hosting/))
- WP Engine: 25,000 visits/mo on the Essential plan at its cheapest capacity tier ([source](https://wpengine.com/plans/))
- Lean: none. No documented basis to lean either way on this criterion.

### Included bandwidth

- Kinsta: 20GB server bandwidth a month on the Single 20GB plan, plus 125GB of CDN bandwidth. ([source](https://kinsta.com/wordpress-hosting/))
- WP Engine: 75 GB per month on Essential plans, 550 GB on Core and 550 GB+ on Enterprise, measured as gigabytes transferred per month. ([source](https://wpengine.com/plans/))
- Lean: 21% Kinsta / 79% WP Engine — proportional to the documented capacity. inetGeek's own reading, computed from the two values above by the rules at https://inetgeek.com/methodology/, not a provider claim.

### Max request duration

- Kinsta: 300 seconds (default PHP max_execution_time) ([source](https://kinsta.com/docs/wordpress-hosting/php/))
- WP Engine: 60 seconds ([source](https://wpengine.com/support/platform-settings/))
- Lean: 83% Kinsta / 17% WP Engine — proportional to the documented capacity. inetGeek's own reading, computed from the two values above by the rules at https://inetgeek.com/methodology/, not a provider claim.

### Git deployment

- Kinsta: Limited ([source](https://kinsta.com/docs/wordpress-hosting/site-management/git/))
- WP Engine: Supported — Via GitPush, WP Engine's own tool, over SSH keys rather than a connected repository. ([source](https://wpengine.com/support/git/))
- Lean: 36% Kinsta / 64% WP Engine — documented support level. inetGeek's own reading, computed from the two values above by the rules at https://inetgeek.com/methodology/, not a provider claim.

### Edge network

- Kinsta: Supported ([source](https://kinsta.com/docs/wordpress-hosting/wordpress-cdn/kinsta-cdn/))
- WP Engine: Limited — Global Edge Security is a paid add-on: Cloudflare CDN, WAF, DDoS mitigation and SSL, not included by default. ([source](https://wpengine.com/support/ges/))
- Lean: 64% Kinsta / 36% WP Engine — documented support level. inetGeek's own reading, computed from the two values above by the rules at https://inetgeek.com/methodology/, not a provider claim.

### Regions

- Kinsta: 30 data centers ([source](https://kinsta.com/docs/service-information/data-center-locations/))
- WP Engine: Google Cloud: Iowa (us-central1), South Carolina (us-east1), Montreal (northamerica-northeast1), Belgium (europe-west1), London (europe-west2), Frankfurt (europe-west3), Netherlands (europe-west4) and others; some regions carry upgraded pricing. ([source](https://wpengine.com/support/servers/))
- Lean: none. No documented basis to lean either way on this criterion.

### Support on entry paid plan

- Kinsta: 24/7 human support in 8 languages, on every plan including the cheapest. ([source](https://kinsta.com/plans/))
- WP Engine: 24/7 technical support on Essential, the entry plan; Core adds priority support alongside dedicated infrastructure. ([source](https://wpengine.com/plans/))
- Lean: neither leads — both document the same answer.

### SOC 2

- Kinsta: SOC 2 Type II report, audited by BARR Advisory with Vanta as the GRC platform; copy requested under NDA from the Trust Report page. ([source](https://kinsta.com/docs/service-information/soc-2/))
- WP Engine: SOC 2 Type II and SOC 3 reports are available on request from an Account Manager or WP Engine Sales; they are not published on the site. ([source](https://wpengine.com/support/wp-engines-security-environment/))
- Lean: neither leads — both document the same answer.

### ISO 27001

- Kinsta: Trust Center compliance list shows ISO 27001:2022 alongside ISO 27017 and ISO 27018; the ISO 27001 certificate is a requestable document there. Page renders client-side (Vanta portal); text read with a rendering fetch. ([source](https://trust.kinsta.com/))
- WP Engine: ISO 27001:2022 certified; the certification is available on request via an Account Manager or WP Engine Sales. ([source](https://wpengine.com/support/wp-engines-security-environment/))
- Lean: neither leads — both document the same answer.

### HIPAA

- Kinsta: No HIPAA-compliant hosting product and no Business Associate Agreements; Kinsta says PHI should not be stored or transmitted on the platform. ([source](https://kinsta.com/docs/wordpress-hosting/wordpress-reference/technical-faq/))
- WP Engine: No - the Acceptable Use Policy forbids using the Services to store or process Protected Health Information as defined under HIPAA. ([source](https://wpengine.com/legal/aup/))
- Lean: neither leads — both document the same answer.

### GDPR / data residency

- Kinsta: DPA: the customer selects the data center region its applications are hosted in; some parts of the Services still require international transfers, covered by the SCCs and UK Addendum. ([source](https://kinsta.com/legal/data-processing-addendum/))
- WP Engine: Hosting region is customer-selectable and includes EU locations (Belgium, London, Netherlands, Finland, Frankfurt); moves between regions by Support request. ([source](https://wpengine.com/support/servers/))
- Lean: neither leads — both document the same answer.

### PCI DSS

- Kinsta: PCI compliance is not guaranteed and Kinsta does not audit customer sites; customers have passed third-party PCI scans while hosted on Kinsta. ([source](https://kinsta.com/docs/wordpress-hosting/wordpress-reference/technical-faq/))
- WP Engine: WP Engine does not store, process or transmit cardholder data, and its Acceptable Use Policy prohibits customers from doing so on the platform. ([source](https://wpengine.com/support/wp-engine-and-pci-compliance/))
- Lean: neither leads — both document the same answer.

### Encryption at rest

- Kinsta: DPA Annex II: all Customer Personal Data stored in data centers — all Customer Applications and access logs — is encrypted at rest. ([source](https://kinsta.com/legal/data-processing-addendum/))
- WP Engine: All data on WP Engine servers is encrypted at rest and in transit by default; backup media is encrypted as well. ([source](https://wpengine.com/support/wp-engines-security-environment/))
- Lean: neither leads — both document the same answer.

### Role-based access control

- Kinsta: MyKinsta roles: a single Company Owner plus three company-level roles (Administrator, Developer, Billing), and Site Administrator or Site Developer granted per site. ([source](https://kinsta.com/docs/company-settings/user-management/))
- WP Engine: User Portal roles - Owner, Full (with/without billing) and Partial (with/without billing) - scope environment, billing and user-management actions. ([source](https://wpengine.com/support/users/))
- Lean: neither leads — both document the same answer.

### Dedicated infrastructure

- Kinsta: Dedicated virtual server with dedicated CPU and RAM, sold as an add-on to a hosting plan starting at $300 a month. ([source](https://kinsta.com/wordpress-hosting/dedicated/))
- WP Engine: Premium plans are fully self-contained environments not shared with other WP Engine customers; other customers get logically separate environments. The plans page separately marks Core and Enterprise environment type as "Isolated" and Essential as "Shared". ([source](https://wpengine.com/support/wp-engines-security-environment/))
- Lean: neither leads — both document the same answer.

## Which should you choose?

Pick Kinsta if WordPress sites that want each install in its own isolated container with a Cloudflare-backed CDN included, and a data centre chosen from thirty locations. Cron jobs run on the server rather than on page visits.

Pick WP Engine if WordPress teams that deploy with Git rather than SFTP — GitPush works over SSH — and want bandwidth overages handled by a conversation rather than an automatic charge on shared plans.

Consider something else: Kinsta — The entry plan is $35 a month for a single site, which is a large step up from shared hosting if you do not need the isolation.

Consider something else: WP Engine — Scripts must finish inside 60 seconds; the execution limit can be lowered but not raised.

## Documented by only one

One side documents these and the other does not. An absence is a missing source, not a stated "no" — except where a line says the other page was READ on a date and does not mention it, which is a sourced observation and the only one-sided case this site leans on.

- Egress over allowance: WP Engine: No bandwidth overage charge on Shared plans
- Containers: Kinsta: Supported
- Persistent storage: Kinsta: Supported
- Managed databases: Kinsta: Supported
- Uptime SLA: WP Engine: A 99.99% uptime guarantee from Core upward. Essential, the entry plan, does not list one.

## Questions this comparison answers

**Entry paid plan: Kinsta or WP Engine?**

Kinsta: $35/month for the entry single-site plan (first month $0, then $35/month); $30/month if paid annually.
WP Engine: Starting at $28.00/month for the Managed Hosting Platform, quoted in USD; $336.00 if billed annually. On 14 September 2026 the same URL also served a euro-priced variant at €25.60/month, to roughly one request in eight; thirty consecutive samples on 15 September returned only the dollar-priced body, so that behaviour is recorded as observed and not as current.

**When you exceed a cap: Kinsta or WP Engine?**

Kinsta: Sites stay online and are billed an overage fee of $0.50 per 1,000 visits; disk space overage is prorated at $2 per GB per month
WP Engine: Not throttled or cut off; billed $2 per 1,000 extra monthly visitors

**Included bandwidth: Kinsta or WP Engine?**

Kinsta: 20GB server bandwidth a month on the Single 20GB plan, plus 125GB of CDN bandwidth.
WP Engine: 75 GB per month on Essential plans, 550 GB on Core and 550 GB+ on Enterprise, measured as gigabytes transferred per month.

**Should I choose Kinsta or WP Engine?**

Pick Kinsta if WordPress sites that want each install in its own isolated container with a Cloudflare-backed CDN included, and a data centre chosen from thirty locations. Cron jobs run on the server rather than on page visits.
Pick WP Engine if WordPress teams that deploy with Git rather than SFTP — GitPush works over SSH — and want bandwidth overages handled by a conversation rather than an automatic charge on shared plans.